Other dependencies should be attached with the scriptable plug-in, which will be developed by a user.

Other dependencies should be attached with the scriptable plug-in, which will be developed by a user.

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[[Image:Glass.gif]] [http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plug-in-architecture/plugin_architecture.html Plug-In Architecture Notes]. When starting the "scriptable" plug-in, the extensions defined in ''plugin.xml'' should be processed by a custom handler, that will override the standardized extension processing.

== Deliverables ==

== Deliverables ==

Revision as of 16:36, 12 June 2007

Contents

About

Scripting language like Groovy (or JRuby) is an ideal choice for Java developer to do quick prototyping. The biggest benefit of Eclipse support for Groovy plug-in development is that while changing the plug-in on-the-fly there's no need to start a separate Eclipse instance or restart the IDE when something was changed in the code. This would rapidly improve the speed of lightweight plug-in development.

This project aims to add ability to write plugins in JVM-based scripting language, like Groovy and JRuby. But it could be a starting point for any other JVM scripting language, like BeanShell or Jython.

Legend

Needs some investigation
Patch in progress
Bug fixed / Feature added

Status/Timeline

Implementation of runtime engine to run the scripts. javax.scripting API is in use for this purpose.

The engine, codename yummy, isn't very advanced piece but it is sufficient to run a Groovy/JRuby script.

How to attach an action, that is implemented using a scripting language (Groovy or JRuby), to an eclipse button or menu

How the dependencies (OSGi bundles), that are used by a script, will be handled by the engine.

The dependencies for any specific language PDE implementation are:

<language>.jar, e.g. groovy-all.jar

<language>-engine.jar, e.g. groovy-engine.jar

yummy.jar, i.e. the plug-in for any specific language will use the engine to run the scripts executed by <language>-engine.jar at the end.

The dependencies will be provided via "add nature" functionality.

Other dependencies should be attached with the scriptable plug-in, which will be developed by a user.

Plug-In Architecture Notes. When starting the "scriptable" plug-in, the extensions defined in plugin.xml should be processed by a custom handler, that will override the standardized extension processing.

Deliverables

The main results to be reached:

- An Eclipse extension/plug-in to (re)load (Groovy/JRuby) scripts on the fly.

- Command line console support to modify and change the program behavior interactively. This could look like in case Apache Derby ij plug-in